Vol. 2, No. 5
December 1999
Editor: Bruce Prescott

Post-Convention Supplement

Why Baptist Families are
Fracturing

By Bruce Prescott

The Bible Belt, the heartland of the Southern Baptist
Convention, has the highest divorce rate in America. Only Nevada, home of the
quickie-divorce, has a higher rate of divorce than Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma
and Tennessee.

SBC leaders and Oklahoma Baptist leaders think the solution
to the problem of divorce is to tell wives to “submit” to their
husbands. “Submissive” wives don’t question their husband’s
directions and they hold their tongues when they know their husband is leading
the family astray. In the words of Dorothy Patterson, a drafter of the SBC’s
family statement, "When it comes to submitting to my husband, even when
he’s wrong, I just do it. He is accountable to God." In the
Fundamentalist’s world, husbands give orders and wives obey. All
relationships, even families, are structures of power and servility.

Unfortunately for Fundamentalist’s, most
women in the real world of twentieth century America believe that marriages are
built on love and respect. They got that idea from the Bible (Eph. 5:33),
not from their culture, and they expect to be equal partners in a regenerate
relationship. They got that idea from the Bible too (Gal. 27-28; Eph.
5:21-33).

Fundamentalists don’t deny that love is the basis for
marriage. They just define love in the terms of pagan Roman culture rather than
in the terms of biblical Christianity. For Fundamentalist’s, love is a
struggle for power and marriage is a relationship between a master and a slave.

Christ, on the other hand, demonstrated in word and in
deed, and in life and in death, that true love is sacrificial and self-giving.
Christian love concerns itself with serving others not with ruling over them.
That is the only kind of love with power to reconcile fractured and broken
relationships.

The want of genuine love and respect within Baptist homes
could be glimpsed, on a broader scale, in the dynamics of the Baptist family at
the recent Oklahoma Baptist Convention.

Stress fractures within the Baptist family have been
apparent for more than a decade.

Most recently, strains arose when one party decided to
revise the terms of the covenant under which the family was united (the 1963
Baptist Faith & Message) and insisted on forcing those terms on the other
party.

Mainstream Baptists suggested that the family reaffirm its
original confession and asked for an opportunity to discuss the issue with the
whole family. The whole family agreed on a time and a place for this
discussion. Before the appointed time, however, the “head” of the
family led his side of the family to adopt his revisions. At the appointed
time, when the Mainstream side of the family arrived, they politely pointed out
that the basic rules of trust and respect had been violated (Roberts Rules of
Order). The “head” of the family then lovingly claimed to have power
to change the times for family meetings and put an end to discussions on this
issue.

When the “heads” of Oklahoma’s Baptist clan publicly
act in such an autocratic and dictatorial fashion, they are demonstrating how
they expect the “heads” of families to act in the privacy of their
homes. Their handling of Mainstream Baptists sends a clear signal about
the kind of “love” and “leadership” to which wives are being told to “graciously
submit.”

Instead of listening in love, engaging in
dialogue, and establishing relationships of mutual respect and mutual
submission, Oklahoma Baptist leaders are advising men to show their wives “who’s
boss?” and telling women to “shut up” and “knuckle under.”

The enthusiasm with which some Oklahoma Baptist pastors
endorsed the actions of their leaders at the state convention meeting should
inform the Baptist laity about the quality of Fundamentalist pastoral
leadership.

If you are a Baptist and your daughter is in an abusive
marriage, you might need to think twice before suggesting that she make an
appointment with a fundamentalist pastor to discuss family matters.

If her pastor is a Fundamentalist, he probably thinks he
can fix every marital problem by bringing dad and the kids together and, before
mom arrives, have them pass a decree telling mom to “graciously submit” to
dad’s abuse.

Only a Fundamentalist would wonder how this brand of “love”
and “leadership” could lead to divorce.